As has been speculated on for some months due to other examples in the industry, embattled hedge fund manager Steven A Cohen is changing the name of his US-based SAC Capital Advisors to a family office structure called Point72 Asset Management. Cohen’s firm will no longer manage client money.

As has been speculated on for some months due to other examples in the industry, embattled hedge fund manager Steven A Cohen is changing the name of his US-based SAC Capital Advisors to a family office structure called Point72 Asset Management. Cohen’s firm will no longer manage client money, Bloomberg reported.

As far back as the autumn of 2013, this publication and others had pondered whether the SAC business, which agreed in November last year to pay $1.8 billion and plead guilty to securities fraud to settle insider dealing charges, would switch the business into a family office. (US regulations do not apply to family offices managing only family money, subject to certain provisions.) Some other hedge fund companies – albeit for different reasons – have taken the same transformation, as in the case of hedge fund legend George Soros, whose operation no longer oversees external client money.

Point72, which will manage billionaire Cohen’s own fortune after the transition, is being renamed effective next month, President Thomas Conheeney said in a memo to employees, the news service said. The new name refers to the address of SAC’s headquarters at 72 Cummings Point Road in Stamford, Connecticut, it said.

“In the aftermath of our settlement with the government, Steve and senior management considered whether our path forward as a family office would be simpler if we operated with new legal entities and new names,” Conheeney is quoted as saying.

As part of the settlement in November, Cohen agreed to close SAC and return client money. Six former employees have pleaded guilty to insider trading, and two others, Michael Steinberg and Mathew Martoma, were found guilty in the last three months of using illegal tips to profit.

SAC was founded in 1992; its two new equity-trading units will do business as Point72 Asset Management and EverPoint Asset Management, the memo is quoted as saying. The new name was first reported by the New York Times, the report added.